a watershed book recommendation

This semester in grad school has been very different in tone for a couple reasons. First, I’m not spending entire weekends “binge” writing. Second, I’m not feeling guilty about taking evenings off here and there and relaxing with dinner and a movie.

So why this huge change?

I bought this book at the beginning of the semester. And it has changed my life.

Now I’ve read tons of books on grad school, writing a dissertation and writing in general, because I tend to be one of those people that over-prepares and over-researchers everything. They were all great books– some better than others– but none of them actually pushed me to actually make a writing schedule and stick with it. I couldn’t even stick with that whole “writing your dissertation in 15 minutes a day” thing. I understood the principle behind the idea of writing regularly, but no one book ever convinced me I could just do it.

So I’ve spent the last few years waiting for some kind of writing habit to kick in. My advisor has spent these years nudging me telling me about how much writing a professor needs to produce regularly. I’ve talked to professors who tell me about their daily writing (every morning at 5am, every morning at 4am, every night at 10pm) and I tried out some different times but nothing ever worked. Either I couldn’t find the “perfect” place (library? office? home?) or I didn’t stick with it, and I end up pulling some stressful marathon of writing over a weekend (and chalking it up to my famous procrastination).

This book is different. It doesn’t have anything on the psychology of why we write, why we don’t, or our fears about writing, success/failure etc. (even if it is written by a psychiatrist). Instead it just tells you to just sit down someplace and write at the same time every day. No excuses. And I know usually this “tough love” “just do it” thing works really well for me (and might not work well for everyone else).

The basic idea is that we have to write and that we don’t get to be all moody and angst-filled about it like novelists get to be because we’re writing academic non-fiction. And writers that “wait for inspiration”, or try to “find” time to write, or wait until they’re “in the mood”, don’t actually produce much writing at all (why was this shocking to me?). It is all about a schedule, and a plan, and then sticking to it. And I always used to think stuff like “I can’t keep a regular writing schedule”, to which this brilliant book pointed out that people who say stuff like that follow all kinds of regular schedules (which is true– I am all about schedules for sleeping, eating, drinking beer etc.). And I have my macbook I can bring anyplace. I have no excuses left.

So I made a very simple schedule– 2 hours a day from 2-4pm in my favorite library on campus. And all day Friday is specifically data collection day (which I can do from home). I make a list of concrete stuff I need to do every day, and sit down with the task of checking stuff off. And I’ve found that usually I stay until 5pm because I get in a groove of working– I’ve been waiting for that to happen for years! The writing might not be fun, but I just plug away at it anyway. Now after a few weeks of doing this, I actually feel like my day isn’t complete until I get to have that quiet writing time. And when I get home afterwards I can relax, actually feeling good for a change. The shocking thing is that I’ve handed in some stuff before the deadline (which is insane for me).

I realize I’ll have to add more hours to each day’s writing to actually get my dissertation done, but for now I am just relishing in this new habit. Habits get a bad reputation. Now I’ll all for habits (my beer at 6pm habit is especially important).

Now how do I apply these same principals to going to the gym and using the elliptical machine? How? That’s where I’m stumped. That involves much more than just sitting in the library with my macbook– I need to wear sneakers, and bring gym clothes, and change and stuff. I wish there was a similar book to get me into that habit. Why is that so much harder?